The Painted Sails

There once was a boy who loved to draw and paint but his father was a sailor who wanted him to be a sailor too and so he refused to buy the  boy the things he needed to paint with.
"Men in my family have been sailors for generations", he said to his son, "And thats what you're going to be so you can just forget about all this painting nonsense".
But, unable to find canvas and paint, one day, the boy, in desperation took some old tins of paint that were used for painting the hulls of wooden boats and he painted pictures upon the sails of his fathers boat; pictures of birds with enormous glaring eyes and screeching beaks.
When he saw what the boy had done, however, the father was very furious.
"What have you done to my sails, you vandal?", he yelled at his son, "I can't sail with those. The other sailors will all laugh when they see me with pictures of birds on my sails".
 But, try as he might, his father couldn't remove the pictures from the sails and he needed to go upon an important and urgent sailing trip and so he said to the boy, "I cannot punish you now but when I get back from my sailing trip, mark my words, there will be trouble".
Then the father, grimacing at the sight of the giant angry birds painted upon his sails, cast off in his boat.
He had only been at sea a few days however, when suddenly he noticed the seabirds  around his boat begin to grow eerily quiet and the sea become very rough and choppy as if there was a storm brewing but then, much to the mans surprise, rather than a storm, out from under the sea he saw a giant sea monster rise up with three long scaly necks and three gigantic heads; roaring fire from three gigantic mouths.
And seeing the roaring monster towering over him, the sailor was terrified and, kneeling and clutching a talisman, he prayed to the saints of the sea, "Oh saints, do not let that monster eat me, I beg of you".
But then suddenly, something even more remarkable happened.
For, seeing the pictures of angry birds with enormous eyes and screeching beaks painted upon the sails of the mans boat, the monster thought they were real and they looked so fierce and frightening that the monster was afraid of them.
So instead of eating the sailor, the monster just dived back below the ocean and swam away.
"That was my sons paintings that did that", thought the sailor, looking up at the birds painted upon his sails and seeing them in a new light, "He must be a very good artist indeed if his painted birds can scare off a sea monster".
And so when the man finished his sailing trip and sailed back home he didn't punish his son.
Instead he bought him paint and cavasses and things to make art with and the boy painted many marvellous pictures but, not only that, once other sailors heard his fathers story about how his painted sails had scared away a sea monster, they all wanted his son to paint their sails aswell and so the boy became a very wealthy artist which, even though it was not as good as being a sailor, still made his father very proud.